Monday, January 30, 2006

If I Had An Old Laser ...

It's winter in the northern hemisphere and many of us Laser sailors are suffering from cabin fever. One symptom is a very silly thread at the Laser Forum about what the writers would do with an old Laser. Here are some of the ideas so far.

If I had an old Laser I would ...

make a mold out of it, and then lay the mold with carbon fiber and make a Laser that a kid could lift with one hand

saw the boat in half from bow to stern, put it on a stand and put glass on top, and use it for a bar

chop it up and use it for a hiking bench


put wheels on it and sail around the parking lot

attach ice skates on the bottom for the November to April sailing season

play around with some foils


attempt to surf at a beach on my Laser

go in a Laser Demolition Derby in 25 knots

go out in the ocean in 30 knots and see how well I can cartwheel the boat by nosediving

sail it in front of a ferry on Sydney Harbour and watch it get demolished

get a bunch of those small rocket motors and see what happens

chuck it off a really high bridge and see what happens


Come to think of it forget what I said about cabin fever. Some of these comments are from the southern hemisphere and those guys have absolutely no excuse for their insanity.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad to see that very few of the responses have anything to do with restoring the old Laser and then competing or teaching with it.

GRP boats have very long life spans are quite easy to restore, relative to other materials. Why would so many of these people, as I hesitate to call them sailors, want to destroy a perfectly good, if aged, boat?

Tillerman said...

I agree with you. Lasers are remarkably sturdy and there are still plenty of boats from the early 70s out there competing.

I guess the premise of the original question was if you had an old Laser whose hull was in such a bad state that it was no good for racing any more, waht would you do with it?

Tillerman said...

Yeah - further to my answer in the previous post, the original question on the forum specifically asked about an old "not salvageable" Laser.

Apologies for the confusion, Dan. Laser people really are sailors and, in fact, many of them love their Lasers more than their ... On second thoughts, I won't go there. She might be reading this blog. (Only joking dear.)

Anonymous said...

In that case, I'd second the idea of making a bar out of the hull. :D

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